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2012-01-01. A Community in Exile.
Confessions of a Rebel Angel; The Wisdom of the Watchers and the Destiny of Planet Earth. – Book 1B. Chapter 11. ~ by Timothy Wyllie
“Ribald Rejection, Reincarnational Insights, Fall of the City, the Serpent People, and a First Visit to Zandana”
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Confessions of a Rebel Angel. Book 1B. Chapter 11. A Community in Exile.
We all should have known better. I understand that now I’m looking at the rebellion through a clearer lens. And herein is one of the challenges I face in preparing this narrative: I look back as I write with such a profoundly changed state of mind that it’s difficult to chart precisely when I first realized the folly of my decision to side with the rebels. So please be patient with me, kind reader, and remember that Watchers don’t learn as fast as humans. And we’re certainly not accustomed to making mistakes! Within ninety years the tribes we had liberated—the very ones we had strategized for and whom we’d favored with advanced weaponry—all coalesced and attacked the city of Dalamatia, laying a siege that lasted a year before they finally overran the place. Fortunately for the secession staff and their companions, this delay offered a chance for them to get out with their midwayer associates and camp followers and head northward.
The escape was well planned and was largely facilitated by their midwayers, who fomented mayhem in the camps of the tribes besieging the city. By setting fire to tents carefully chosen to suggest a deliberate provocation, they managed to turn tribe against tribe, distracting them sufficiently for the staff and their entourage to slip away on a moonless night while the fighting was at its height. The staff had always maintained a presence on the coast, a few miles to the south of the city walls, and had built a small fleet of boats they kept in a sheltered harbor. This had provided the city with a steady supply of fresh fish for as long as the staff had been there. Knowing the value of polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids in brain development, they had made sure it was one of the first actions they undertook after they completed the city walls. The boats, of course, were of an extremely simple design, as they weren’t allowed to be too far in advance of contemporary boat-building standards.
From the surprised comments I heard when the staff finally did set sail, it sounded to me as if the designers included a number of hidden improvements that served to make their trip up the Persian Gulf safer and more comfortable. The inclusion, for example, of a small retractable keel gave them access to the shallow waters of the many swamps they encountered, as well as enabling them to outrun the storms that could blow in when they were in the open Gulf. A small village had grown up overlooking the harbor, housing those privileged humans who could be trusted to work on the boats. When it was clear the city was going to be overrun by the barbarian tribes, the staff made sure the boats were readied for their escape. In another unforeseen consequence, some of the native boat-builders who had worked with the staff on the secret improvements and who’d chosen to stay behind when the staff left, subsequently revolutionized boat design in that area of the coast.
The tribes went wild after taking over the city. The few human inhabitants who’d decided not to escape with the staff, believing they would be hailed as special by the tribes for the knowledge they’d gained while in the city, were horrified to find themselves being marched away to be sacrificed on a makeshift shrine set up in the central Temple. Soon after entering the city, the hordes began tearing down the neat little houses. Finding the stills led to further violence as the unexpected effects of alcohol took hold. Many died of alcohol poisoning and others in drunken brawls. In a futile effort to curb and control the bloodlust, a shrine was set up in the Temple, dedicated to Nog, a barbarian god of light and fire. The priests of Nog hoped to curb and redirect the violence in service of their god by hurling their prisoners into the fire pit that formed the central feature of the shrine, to be burned alive in a ceremony intended to ensure the sun’s return. This unpleasant and sanguinary attempt to control the hordes failed and the city fell further into dissolution as the tribes drifted away to battle once more among themselves.
The few who remained in the ruined city scratched out a pathetically meager existence where once lived and worked the most sophisticated culture the world would see for another 200,000 years. All this became irrelevant, however, some seventy-two years after the tribes originally broke through the walls when a massive tidal wave sweeping in from the gulf finally obliterated all evidence that such a beautiful city as Dalamatia had ever existed in that spot. So ended this long era in the planet’s turbulent history. For all the difficulties and challenges, compared to what was coming, it had been a golden age full of promise for a well-organized and devoted population governed by a wise and caring Planetary Prince and his brilliant staff. When Dalamatia was finally destroyed by the tidal wave, the secession staff realized that there was no going back. If some of them had been harboring a silent hope that they’d be able to return to the city, apologize for their actions, and be taken back into M A’s welcoming arms, this was a cruel awakening. They’d thrown their cards on the table, and now they had to live with their hands.
It was becoming clear that life among the tribes, a mere two centuries after the uprising, was already deteriorating faster than our efforts to control it. Some of us, mainly in the Watcher group, were starting to regret our decision to align with Caligastia, but we had no choice but to continue to play the cards we’d dealt ourselves. Because I was among this group of Watchers, you might notice my observations becoming somewhat more acerbic as this story progresses. Angels have feelings, too. My sense of disillusionment and disappointment grew almost overwhelming as I watched Caligastia and his loyal staff, now referring to themselves as “freedom fighters,” together with their army of midwayers, dig themselves deeper and deeper into a pit of their own making. One of the results of leaving the city was to liberate, if that is the right word, the staff from any of the strictures imposed on them by M A’s social engineers prior to the uprising. This rejection of the previous regime’s rules reached ridiculous heights as time-tested approaches, which had proved efficacious on 100,000 planets, were heedlessly thrown out for no other reason than that the rule was the product of the hated former administration. The worst of this occurred in the area of our attempts to accelerate the level of the natives’ technological advancement.
There had been such a prohibition on doing this during the previous regime that Nod felt compelled to oppose it in every way possible. Even though all the staff members of Mek’s Council of Arts and Science, the sages of technological expertise, had stayed faithful to Van and the loyalist staff, Nod pressed ahead with his policy of introducing his own better ways of devising weaponry. Remembering, for example, the early failed attempts to introduce steam power and metal smelting and the terror both created in the natives, Nod became convinced that the staff ’s great mistake was to back off. In his view, to accept docilely that the people weren’t ready for advancement had been a criminally delinquent act. He could become quite venomous when he talked about this lapse. And even when they considered mortality in a more abstract sense, knowing that human life continues after death so colored their plans and theories that it might be seen as excusing their coldhearted brutality.
As a consequence, over time they came to care nothing for the value of human life beyond how it could be used for their own purposes. So it was in this troubled world, compounded and made far worse in this case by an unforeseen circumstance. I say unforeseen, but had they consulted one of us Watchers, we could well have warned them of what might occur. After all, we’d seen what was starting to happen to the staff. But by then they were far too set on their course of action to want to hear any opposing opinions from a “bunch of flimsy angels” (Nod’s words). “Don’t listen to them. They don’t know what it’s like to live down here— flitting around in another dimension. It’s all too easy for them to criticize us!” Under this patronizing attitude lay a much deeper distrust of us. The staff had never particularly liked the angels accompanying the mission. Perhaps it was a species issue, because the midwayers were different. They were closer to the staff in nature, as well as being their offspring. The staff trusted them in a way they never trusted us angels.
I think they might have believed we were M A’s secret agents, moles reporting back to Lanaforge’s new administration about their activities. While there might have been some truth in this before the uprising, it was no longer possible. And, believe me, I tried to reach Lanaforge’s ministers, too, but we found that M A had isolated and cut off the spiritual circuits linking us to the higher realms. Where we did come into our own and prove our value to the staff was in our ability to travel to the other quarantined planets in this System. Neither the staff nor midwayers were able to do this, because their vehicles were materially linked to this world. Lucifer and Satan made frequent visits during the first blush of the rebellion and brought news from the other planets, which they shared with the Princes, who then filtered a sanitized version down to the staff. As an observer, I was present at those angelic meetings, so I gained more realistic insight into the progress of the rebellion as a potentially Systemwide event. Lucifer had clearly hoped to convert every single Planetary Prince in all the inhabited worlds to his System. When a mere thirty-seven Princes chose to side with him, it had been an unpleasant shock.
He’d been so carried away by his own brilliant rhetoric and the persuasiveness of his arguments that it was hard for him to believe the response had been so meager. Much of the time in those meetings was taken up with Lucifer’s angry complaints about this or that Planetary Prince—how much he’d done for them and look how they’d repaid him. He called them weaklings and cowards. He accused them of being addicted to sucking at M A’s teats, of buying into M A’s propaganda. He called them lazy for mindlessly following the traditional policies. “Can’t those idiot Princes see what’s happening?!” His voice rising in our minds reached a painful pitch as he continued: “They’re blinded by their own stupidity! How can I be expected to succeed with a mere handful of them behind me? Before M A clamped down with her heavy hand I had over 350 Princes with me. Now look what’s happened! What kind of rebellion is that?
The first sign of a little heat and they head for the security of M A’s arms! We’re going to show up those cowards for what they are!” “Even if we are few,” Satan chimed in, trying to support his chief, “we will prevail! We can push our planets to advance faster and more effectively than anything M A can make happen. Then they’ll see what fools they’ve been to betray us. . . .” Lucifer’s tirades could go on for hours, his moods swinging wildly between a whining complaint that he’d been betrayed by his Princes and his almost obsessive conviction that he would succeed if he could only get all his supporters to stand firm. They would wear down M A’s opposition. Oh, yes—he would show them all. This wasn’t the bright and brilliant Lucifer of old, and Caligastia can scarcely be blamed for only passing on to the staff good news—how magnificently the rebellion was progressing, how strongly Lucifer was holding the energy in the palm of his hands, how we couldn’t fail if we just held firm, and how we’ve been discussing an alliance of free planets, which was going to strengthen our resistance when the time came.
There was never a word about when that time would come, however. Ever since the uprising, the staff on both sides of the conflict were obsessed with obtaining news from the other thirty-six worlds, those whose Planetary Princes sided with Lucifer and the rebels. Van’s far smaller group of angels were being kept busy working on the planet, so they could afford only the occasional survey flight. We thought we’d be better off. Immediately after the rebellion, Caligastia had instructed a number of us angels to maintain an ongoing surveillance of all the inhabited worlds in the System for signs that the rebellion was spreading. It wasn’t. Besides the thirty-seven Planetary Princes and their worlds, who immediately aligned themselves with Lucifer and Satan, much to Caligastia’s dismay, there was never any sign the rebellion was spreading further. This news did not endear us to Caligastia or his staff, as you might imagine. After an unpleasant spate of blaming the messengers, they must have realized they still needed us for reports on the freedom fighters on the other thirty-six worlds, with whom they felt closely allied. As a result, they were forced to remain on courteous terms with us.
Although both Lucifer and Satan had made periodic appearances to consult with Caligastia and Daligastia about strategy, and had brought news of the other worlds with them, these visits became progressively more infrequent as time passed. Therefore it fell to me to visit and report back on the activities of a nearby inhabited world, which turned out to be remarkably similar in development to this one, to Earth—which I surprised myself by thinking of as my home planet. I’ll call this neighboring world Zandana as the nearest approximation to their primary language, and it was similar because the indigenous natives on both planets were at approximately the same level of advancement. The one major difference I was able to report back was that the level of fear and violence was far less troubling on Zandana, and, as a consequence, the natives appeared generally easier to control.
It was similar to Earth, because a large part of the planet was covered with water, although in Zandana’s case there were more island continents, each bounded by ocean. Most of the planetary population lived on one of the largest continental landmasses, which is where their Prince and his staff had established their headquarters. A much higher proportion of the staff had sided with their Planetary Prince, in this case ninety-one out of the hundred, and all ninety-one of their modified mortal companions accompanied them. The majority of their midwayers also aligned themselves with their Prince, although not as many as had affiliated themselves with Caligastia in this world. The more submissive nature of the natives on Zandana had persuaded their Prince that Lucifer’s program of greater freedom was just what they needed to push innovation along faster and more effectively than previously. This conviction also turned many of their staff to the rebel cause. Compared to the bitterness and resentment felt by Caligastia, Daligastia, and the majority of the secession staff on Earth toward Van and the loyalists, Zandana’s Prince maintained an amicable relationship with the minority of his staff who had rejected Lucifer’s plan.
While there were heated disagreements between the two factions, it never devolved into the overt hostility we saw break out on this planet. In this case, when the Melchizedek Receivers arrived to take over Zandana’s Seraphic Overgovernment, the small loyalist group was transferred by the Prince to one of the other continents. It was more sparsely inhabited than the large southern island upon which they had established their city. The group was willingly resettled and grateful for the blessing their Prince had bestowed on them. They’d managed to get his signature on a noninterference agreement that gave them a free hand to continue practicing the old ways on a particular piece of land they could call their own. Unlike what happened on Earth, the loyalist staff was permitted to stay on Zandana for the duration of their natural lives, before being recalled to the capital planet of the System.
This arrangement suited both Zandana rebels and loyalists alike in a manner entirely alien to the way Caligastia’s staff regarded those who rejected him. Under Caligastia’s regime, there were frequent skirmishes between the two sides from the start of the uprising, which had then developed into open hostility after their city was destroyed. Caligastia was always a proud being, but when he proclaimed himself God of this world and demanded worship from the natives—although not from us Watchers, I should add—I believe everyone knew in their hearts that he’d gone too far. He’d committed the one sin regarded by M A as absolutely indefensible, that of attempting to usurp the place of the Creator in the hearts of men and women.
For a while this amused us Watchers: he was such an inept god! He spent most of his time trying to impress both his staff and his rebel midwayers, forbidding worship of any god but him and trying to defend his self-proclaimed divinity. “Is Nog any better than me?” the Prince would demand through one of his proxies. “Is that what you want them worshipping? A god of fire and human sacrifice? And then, a few valleys away, there’s some sort of volcano god, and that fertility goddess cult we had to crush. And the bull god! These natives will make a god out of anything! It may as well be me. That way we can begin gathering them together.” This had made some sense at the time. If we chose to ignore this most fundamental of prohibitions, as most of the staff appeared willing to do, perhaps it would rid the natives of their ridiculous superstitions.
As so many of M A’s strictures applied to both the natives’ technological advancement as well as their religious belief systems, the staff had been growing increasingly irritated and frustrated with the natives’ recalcitrance. It had always been stressed that early superstitions needed to be respected as a dawning of the religious urge in a primitive people. However absurd or bloodthirsty these invented “ghost gods” were, they and their followers were expected to be handled with great care by the staff. Beware of impatience. We were all warned about it. There was no point in hurrying. We were assured in the Jerusem seminars that the natural human impulse to discover their Indwelling Spirits and to worship the Father God would ultimately supplant any superstitions as the millennia passed. “Leave those primitive gods alone,” we were told. “They will all disappear over time.” But then came the rebellion and everything changed.
I am a Watcher Angel and my name is Georgia.
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The following is an excerpt from the Timothy Wyllie’s book series on rebel angels, specifically an account as described by the angel referred to as ,’Georgia”.
To view other books by Timothy Wyllie, Click on book to view more at Amazon.com.
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